00:00There was talk that there'd be a mass firing of past officials. But I had a good rapport
00:07with both of them, Mr. Jaitley and Mr. Modi. And I used to go every month and a half,
00:12brief Mr. Modi on what was going on. He listened very intently.
00:17And when you saw yourself depicted as, in this case, James Bond,
00:21do you remember when you picked up that newspaper? What did you feel about it?
00:25You know, I'm, much as it may seem different, I'm a fairly conservative guy. But you know,
00:33if this is what takes the broader public to come along, so be it. Walking across India like this
00:44requires, in a person who's seen his father and his grandmother destroyed by assassins,
00:52a degree of courage, which is really commendable.
00:56Dr. Rajan, we're going to show you three photographs,
00:59if you can tell us a little bit on the background.
01:01You know, this was when I took over as governor. And I was trying to rebuild spirits in India,
01:12because we had been hit by the tapir tantrum. We were one of the fragile five. And there was
01:18some worry that government, you know, in the last days of the UPA was not, was being hampered
01:25by a whole lot of, you know, opposition and scandals and this and that. So,
01:36what we set out to do was give a list of things we would do. Here are a bunch of actions we would
01:43take. And that was important on that first day, because it suggested that, you know,
01:49reform was still happening in India. And that did have a positive effect on spirits as exemplified
01:57by this, you know, I was also relatively young for an RBI governor. And so there was a little bit of
02:06foolery going on on that. But the idea was that we were actually going to elevate the level of
02:15reforms. And, you know, there was some confidence building, which was exactly what we wanted.
02:23Right. And when you saw yourself depicted as in this case, James Bond,
02:28do you remember when you picked up that newspaper? What did you feel about it?
02:32You know, I'm, much as it may seem different, I'm a fairly conservative guy. And, you know,
02:42this was not necessarily the right image for a central banker. We were trying to
02:48portray confidence, calm. But, you know, if this is what takes, you know, the broader public to
02:57come along, so be it. What was important was to ensure that, you know,
03:04you did send the image of confidence and capability within the central bank. And again,
03:11and again, when I talked to RBI staff, I emphasized the capabilities of the RBI and
03:18the integrity of the RBI. And those were really important in that environment.
03:24We'll show you the second image, Dr. Rajan. Could you talk about that a bit?
03:30I think it was important to, as an institution, to establish contact with the
03:41officials in the NDA government, because we are a democracy, you know, government changes.
03:48And so I went and met with first the finance minister and then the prime minister.
03:54And what was important is both were intent on showing continuity. You know, there was talk that
04:00there'd be a mass firing of past officials. But I had a good rapport with both of them, Mr. Jaitley
04:08and Mr. Modi. And I used to go every month and a half, brief Mr. Modi on what was going on. He
04:15listened very intently. As I said, he's not an economist, but he's obviously a leader who wants
04:23to know. And we used to have a very fruitful conversation where we talk about what needed
04:30to be done and so on. Yeah, so as I said, again, maybe 28 months with the NDA, when you see some
04:41of the trolls, you would think that I spent all my time with the UPA government. Actually, I cut
04:48interest rates, I elevated interest rates in the UPA government, cut them in the NDA. You would
04:54not know that from the kind of dialogue that sometimes happens in public. Our last image,
04:59Dr. Rajan, we'll put that up on the screen for you. And, you know, this is the previous Bharat
05:04Jodha Yatra for Rahul Gandhi. And you had an interaction with him as well. If you could talk
05:09about that a bit. Well, I think Mr. Gandhi's Bharat Jodha Yatra was, you know, a attempt to
05:19push the idea that one, of course, is we are an integrated country, we are one country.
05:25But also democracy was very, and free speech dialogue was a very important component of it.
05:32And I thought that was really very important. I find Mr. Gandhi is someone who is, you know,
05:44a person with a variety of ideas, some of which, you know, I agree with,
05:53you know, wholeheartedly, some of which we have a debate on.
05:57This dialogue, we spent a couple of a few hours walking together was, you know, talking about
06:04some of those ideas, but I have had many conversations over time with him. And I think,
06:10you know, his push for love, not hate, for democracy, for national integration,
06:20his visits to some of the hotspots of the country, Manipur, for example, and more generally,
06:27I think, the courage in walking relatively unprotected. I mean, on this walk, I realized how,
06:34you know, it's walking across India like this is requires in a person who's seen his
06:44father and his grandmother destroyed by assassins, a degree of courage, which is really commendable.
06:53So I have said repeatedly, I talked to all. But, you know, this was a attempt to say that
07:07democracy was really important for India. And I subscribed to that. And this was a walk for
07:14democracy.
Comments